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Prodigal daughter? Whitman returns to tech, not politics

During an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign, Whitman spent nearly $150M of her money. |
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Although the role gives her a way to remind people what she can accomplish, it doesn’t add anything new to her resume, they say.

“If she is successful as HP’s chief executive, it could bolster those credentials,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at University of Southern California. “But it probably doesn’t make much difference to voters since they probably see her as a smart business woman.”

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“This is her going back to the world that she knows best,” he said. “It’s no more surprising that Meg Whitman would take over HP than it is that Jerry Brown would run for governor.”

Turning around HP, which has seen chief executives come and go in recent years, carries little risk for Whitman politically.

“Say from a year from now she's had some success, I don't see where that precludes her from going to Washington and joining a Romney Cabinet,” said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute. “Democrats may grill her on layoffs, off shoring but it won’t be a big issue.”

Chris Lehane, a political consultant in California, disagreed. “If in the long-run she is able to make HP profitable and grow the company in the U.S. she can be a winner to both Wall Street and the public, but if she only does it by shredding U.S. jobs she will be her generation’s Chainsaw Dunlop,” he said.

For those who supported her in her gubernatorial bid, the jump to HP’s helm speaks to her character.

“Some people go through something like she did in 2010 and they never recover,” said Duf Sundheim, former chairman of the California Republican Party. “Others, it makes them stronger. She clearly falls in the latter.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 4:34 p.m. on September 22, 2011.

Readers' Comments (8)

Meg Whitman was a great CEO for eBay, but is one of the worst choices imaginable for HP. She has absolutely no experience running a company whose core business is enterprise servers and heavy peripherals. HP has had one of the worst boards of any otherwise large and viable businesses. It's like a nest of mentally disturbed teenagers.

At the moment HP doesn't know its own nature or its own mission, and it is absolutely headless. If I held HP stock I'd be half insane with rage (and I don't hold HP stock precisely because of the mentally unhinged and incompetent board).

I don't really care about Whitman's politics. In her element she's a highly competent CEO, but she is going to be so far out of her element that she'll be set up for failure.

The printers i bought from HP in the past were lousy compared to Lexmark's which I still use and just buy ink for.

Now, with the moron whitman at the controls, I would not be surprised to see HP fail just like she did in her campaign for gov. because she and all of the republican candidates like bachmann and palin and angle are the worst morons I have ever seen in public life.

I respectfully disagree. I think Meg Whitman will do well at the helm of HP. She has the exact kind of experience HP needs. The most telling thing about her was when she joined eBay and all the software people were talking PHP and HTML she jumped in and said: "Great, but what is your business model? How do you make money off of this" The rest is, as they say, history. Meg is natural whereas Carly was also natural (born loser). First she arranged that disastrous merger with Compaq and if that wasn't enough, she launched a spying operation that would make the CIA blush. HP has some serious work to do to get back on its feet. First, they will have to reshuffle the board and get rid of the deadwood. Then comes the product lineup.